


demands

by GlowRoseate



Category: Uncharted (Video Games)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Canon Compliant, M/M, a retelling in vignettes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-06
Updated: 2017-03-06
Packaged: 2018-09-29 19:19:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10142141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GlowRoseate/pseuds/GlowRoseate
Summary: All the times Rafe told Sam to stay.





	

“Stay.”

Sam only pauses the edge of the booth because the order comes from a boy, really, looking no older than Nathan and certainly no older than _him_.

Adler blends into the diner well enough with his dark, plain clothes, but there’s something different about him that can’t be qualified by clothing. He holds his head a certain way. He walks a certain way. He’s wearing a certain watch that looks expensive enough to pay Sam’s rent for a couple of months.

“You’re a kid.” A deal-breaker? It ought to be. Sam doesn’t want to be involved in next week’s episode of _Behind Mansion Walls_.

Anger shoots through Adler’s features, livening his heavyset eyes and curling his thin lips into a sneer. It is just as quickly gone, but the sneer lingers. The bitterness. “I am not a _kid_. I’m someone with the resources you need. But if you’ve found someone else who can get you even remotely close to that cross, then, by all means.” He gestures to the front door with his glass. It’s full of water, otherwise untouched. Sam imagines Adler hasn’t deemed it worthy of touching his mouth.

“Look.” Sam shifts back in the booth to look at him properly.

Adler’s eyes harden.

“I don’t know where you’re coming from, but I’m not lookin’ to involve whatever circle you run in.”

“You have your reasons for spending five months trying to get into this prison,” Adler says curtly. “I have mine.”

The prison or the cross?

“All right, Adler. As long as you negotiate your curfew with your parents, huh?”

Adler smiles without teeth. “Rafe.”

“Rafe,” Sam allows.

“Are you ready to negotiate now, Samuel?”

Sam doesn’t remember telling him his full name.

He takes his hand off the edge of the table. By the end of the night, he is shaking Rafe’s.

 

 

“Stay.”

An odd request to hear again in English.

“Stay and see this through,” Rafe says after Sam has tried his damned best to wash off thirteen years of his life. He passes Sam a box of cigarettes, a brand that Sam would never be able to afford himself.

He thinks of Nathan, who feels less like his brother now and more like a printed name of someone who lives through the headlines strewn about Rafe’s study. Nathan, who has moved on from this hunt. Nathan, who has moved on without him.

“Otherwise, if you plan to leave just like he did, do it now. Don’t waste my time.”

Rafe makes it sound like Sam needs him more than he needs Sam. _Needs._

Does he? He used to be so sure of one way, before. Before.

“Don’t worry, I say you’ve wasted your time enough.” He pockets the cigarettes for now. The taste of them has become a permanence in his mouth for so long; right now he has the aftertaste of dessert on his tongue from the first full-course meal he’s had in thirteen years. He’d like to keep that there for a while longer. “So. Where we pickin’ up from?”

Avery’s cross. Rafe shows him page after page of notes and trial-and-errors — there’s more than one cross floating around. 

Rafe has apparently never quite moved on. It’s a good thing that Sam has remained standing at the exact same place.

 

 

Rafe is older now. He’s changed but hasn’t really _changed_. He isn’t a different person, just _more_ of what he was before. More money. A tighter edge to his voice. A fiercer fire for something — glory? The need to prove? Whatever keeps him burning through sleepless nights. 

Sam thinks he understands.

 

 

“Stay.”

Sam raises an eyebrow, but Rafe has his back turned to him as he rises from the bed. The sheets slide from his body, revealing the marks and scratches Sam left on his back, his hips. He bruises easily, Sam’s learning.

He didn't mean to. Learn, that is. This isn't something he intended to happen.

Rafe stretches languidly. He doesn't look remorseful.

This is the most vulnerable Sam has seen him.

“You’re asking me to stay,” Sam says, sounding out the words. Not asking, he immediately corrects himself. Telling.

“It’s still early in the evening. I don’t want Ms. Ross seeing you and asking questions.”

So Rafe will kick him out later then, when their new partner is fast asleep and no wiser to how intimately _this_ partnership runs.

But it’s warm in Rafe’s bed, so there's that. And Rafe fucks like he does everything else, admittedly, full of fire and demanding nothing short in return.  Sam’s not inclined to move. “Mind if I smoke?”

Rafe passes him the same dull glance he gives his desk of files and notes. “Open a window.”

 

 

The pain is real, bright, buried layers and layers inside and beginning its rapid spread to the rest of him. Someone in a uniform is at his side in an instant, yanking him down to the ground. The ground — Nathan. Oh God, where is Nathan?

“Be careful,” a voice snaps. “I need him alive.” 

Need.

“God damn it, Sam, I said _stay still_.”

He lets the stranger bandage his shoulder. It doesn’t contain the ache.

After, Rafe holds a gun to him, drives him up the rest of the way to the finish line. He doesn’t say it this time but the gun is enough.

 

 

“Stay,” he remembers Rafe saying, seconds before his eyes became too heavy to keep open.

He moves in between: his arm flinging the sword to Nathan, his hands scrabbling at the beam, his heart hammering in tune with _it’s done, it’s done, it’s done._

He watches the treasure plummet. He’s not really there.

Nathan wants to stay, to help him. Sam moves, shoves him. It’s done. 

 

 

They make it out.

He sits in the plane and waits as Nate files in after him. There’s a voice, still, quiet and persisting. _What if he’s alive?_

There’s time. The plane is still open and Nate is still buckling his safety straps into place. Sully is still talking to Elena, not even in the cockpit. 

He could go.

Rafe always bruised easily. In time, these ones might go away, like the others Sam left on him before, and then he might find himself with a fresh slate.

 

 

Sam stays.


End file.
